


Grey Mornings

by Fallynleaf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Pre-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-29 11:24:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17807102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallynleaf/pseuds/Fallynleaf
Summary: The day after Sirius breaks out of Azkaban, Remus receives a job offer.





	Grey Mornings

**Author's Note:**

> Last summer, I reread the Harry Potter series for the dozenth time, then started writing a whole bunch of Remus/Sirius ficlets that were all based on missing scenes from the books. I finished a couple of them, but never quite managed to finish the underlying story that threaded them all together, and after that, I got distracted by a concept for a Marauder-era fic that rapidly became the outline for a full-blown fic novel, and then I dropped everything else to work on _that_ project, leaving the missing scene ficlets to languish in the sad purgatory where all WIPs live.
> 
> That aforementioned longfic is currently sitting at about 42k words and counting, and I fell so in love with the canon from it that I'm considering going back and reworking all of the missing scene fics so that the two universes are compliant with each other.
> 
> But, out of all of those missing scene ficlets, I realized that there was one that was both finished and standalone enough to post, so I thought, why not?
> 
> Continuing my tradition of finishing and posting a new/old fic every International Fanworks Day, here's one for February 15, 2019. This fic is the first Remus/Sirius fic I've finished since 2012. Will it be the first of many others? Hopefully.

The day after the article in the Daily Prophet, there was a knock at Remus’ door. It wasn’t often that Remus got visitors. But that day, he opened the door and found Dumbledore standing on his porch.

“Hello, Remus,” said Dumbledore, “mind if I come in?”

“He’s not here,” said Remus, his voice quiet. “I’m not harboring him.”

“I didn’t think you were,” said Dumbledore kindly. “I came to inquire after a different matter, one that is wholly unrelated.”

Remus opened the door wider, and gestured for Dumbledore to enter. Remus’s house was small, old, and shabby, much like the wizard that occupied it. It was located on the outskirts of muggle London, in a dead-end neighborhood that was gradually falling to pieces, where no one looked twice if they heard strange sounds coming from the cellar on certain nights. Neither of the adjacent houses had occupants. The property value had already been in steep decline long before Remus had scrounged up the money to put a payment down.

“Could I interest you in a cup of tea?” asked Remus.

“Yes, that would be lovely,” said Dumbledore. He took a seat on Remus’s sagging sofa, which was pushed up in the corner of the cramped sitting room.

Remus stepped into the kitchen. He refilled the ancient kettle, then heated it with a quick tap of his wand. As the tea brewed, Remus leaned up and retrieved two teacups from an upper cabinet.

He placed the teapot and the mismatched cups on the table beside the sofa. Then he pulled a chair out from the table in the kitchen and carried it into the sitting room.

“My apologies,” said Remus. “It’s brewed from a teabag, not loose leaf, I’m afraid.”

“That’ll do just fine,” said Dumbledore. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, taking in the rich scent of tea that curled up from his cup in coils of steam.

Remus stared down into his own cup, and tried not to fidget. It had been more than fifteen years since he’d last been in school, and yet it somehow still felt exactly like he’d been called into Dumbledore’s office after a bought of wrongdoing.

“I came to offer you a job,” said Dumbledore, finally.

Remus blinked. “What?” he said.

“The Defense Against the Dark Arts position is, once again, regrettably vacant,” said Dumbledore. “I recall that you had a certain knack for the Defense Against the Dark Arts while you were at school—and afterward, I might add.” Dumbledore’s eye twinkled. “And I understand that you have gathered some teaching experience over the years?”

“Nothing long-term,” said Remus quickly. “Mostly tutoring, a few very short-lived faculty positions—” His lip twisted.

“You are more than qualified for the job,” Dumbledore assured him, “should you wish to take it.”

“Why now?” asked Remus. He couldn’t deny that Dumbledore had good timing. Remus barely had enough money to live on on a good month, and the past year had been particularly lean. But it seemed like there was more at stake here than an old mentor taking pity on a former student that had fallen on hard times.

Dumbledore took a long sip of tea before he said anything, and when he did, it wasn’t much of an answer. “This is brewed very well. Not too bitter, but not weak, either,” he said. “Just what I needed on a grey, dreary day.”

“You’re trying to protect me,” said Remus. “In case he—” He took a breath. “In case Sirius tries to find me.”

“Perceptive as always, Remus,” said Dumbledore. “But that isn’t the only reason. I think perhaps it is time for Harry to meet his parents’ dearest and truest friend.”

Those were adjectives that, once upon a time, had been used to describe _Sirius_ , not Remus.

“Before he meets their betrayer?” said Remus, bitter.

Dumbledore took another sip of tea, looking weary and wise. “Harry doesn’t need to meet Sirius face-to-face to learn about Sirius’s connection to his father, and to himself. He will, without a doubt, hear things that perhaps he shouldn’t, ask questions that perhaps he should, and come to his own conclusions whether they’re true or not.”

“And you want _me_ to…?” Remus started.

“Be there,” said Dumbledore. “For your sake, and for his.”

“There’s still something else, isn’t there?” asked Remus, his heart heavy.

Dumbledore set down his teacup. “Sirius might be targeting Harry,” he said. “We have reason to suspect that he might try to get to him at Hogwarts.”

“And you still want me there?” said Remus. “You’re not worried that I’ll—that I’ll come down on the wrong side. That I’ll help him, the man that I—” he cut himself off roughly.

“I have complete faith in you, Remus,” said Dumbledore. “I believe, beyond a shadow of doubt, that you would do anything to protect James and Lily’s son. In fact, you might be his very best chance at protection, because you know Sirius better than anyone else.”

“Knew,” whispered Remus. “I _knew_ him better than anyone. But I didn’t know him well enough, did I?” He looked up and met Dumbledore’s eyes.

“Love is a great and beautiful thing,” said Dumbledore, his eyes deep wells of kindness. “No matter what comes of it, no matter what anyone tells you, never forget that. But love can also blind us.” He sighed.

Remus glanced at the spine of a photo album on his bookshelf that he hadn’t touched or looked at in years. His mind replayed images of Sirius laughing and smiling alongside his friends, alongside a Remus who laughed and smiled, too.

“There is a story,” said Dumbledore, “that I have never told to a single living soul. It is a painful story, a shameful one.”

Remus waited. Sometimes it felt like that was all he’d been doing for the past twelve years: _waiting_. For what, exactly, he was waiting for, he did not know.

“It happened when I was just a boy,” Dumbledore began. “I was seventeen, and I had intelligence, but lacked wisdom. Which, as you may guess, is the most dangerous combination.” He smiled wryly. “And then I did the only thing I could possibly do to make it worse, which was fall in love.”

Remus’s eyes widened. He’d never heard anyone speak of Dumbledore having had a lover before. As far as history knew, Dumbledore had lived a long life of celibacy.

“I met someone who had more intellect than I, more wisdom than I, and—crucially—more disregard for the lives and happiness of others than I,” Dumbledore continued. “Naturally, I overlooked the last because love only gave me eyes for the first two.”

As he listened, Remus swirled the last sip of tea around his cup. It had long gone cold.

“We spent a summer together,” said Dumbledore, closing his eyes. “That boy and I.”

Something clattered. Remus’s cup on its saucer, held in his trembling hands. _A boy_ , he thought, his heart skipping. _Dumbledore has loved men, too_. That knowledge alone was an incredible gift for Dumbledore to freely offer.

Dumbledore inclined his head in acknowledgement, a familiar twinkle back in his eye. “It was a beautiful, terrible summer. I like to think that despite everything, what was between us was love. But tragedy struck, and he did something unforgivable, and it was over.” He sighed.

“For years, I tried my best to purge him from my mind. Decades, even,” Dumbledore continued. “But the truth is, I was afraid. I was afraid of what we were, who we had been together. I wasn’t ready to finally confront him.

“But I was the only one who _could_ confront him. So I looked past all of my fears, and I finally did what needed to be done. I put him behind bars, where he remains to this day.”

Only one wizard fit Dumbledore’s description. “Grindelwald,” said Remus in a hushed voice.

“Yes,” said Dumbledore, his gaze heavy with sadness and regret. “So you see, Remus, we have more in common than you ever knew.”

Remus leaned forward in his rickety chair, resting his head in his hands as he processed everything that he had just heard. Dumbledore, too, had loved a man who had betrayed everything he’d loved. Dumbledore, too, had had a lover who’d been locked up in prison, and Dumbledore, too, had been unable to move on in order to meet someone else.

“How did you know about me and Sirius?” asked Remus, finally. “Only James and Lily and Peter—and unfortunately Snape—knew that we were—that we were more than just friends.”

“Nothing in particular gave you away,” said Dumbledore kindly. “I merely saw in you something that I had seen in myself. I had wished that—” he sighed. “I had wished that one day, after all of it was over, that the two of you could be happy. Prove that it could be done.”

Something prickled in Remus’s eyes. He stood up, intending to take the empty teacups back into the kitchen, but his hand slipped, and the cup tumbled through the air to the floor. It shattered, ceramic pieces scattering.

Remus dumbly stared down at the mess of shards, his vision blurring.

“ _Reparo_ ,” came Dumbledore’s voice. The pieces of the teacup flew back together, and Dumbledore bent down and gently picked it up off of the floor.

Remus sunk back into his chair, shaking with quiet tears that he buried in his hands as Dumbledore busied himself with the teacups in the background.

There were other wizards and witches like them out there. Wizards that loved wizards, and witches that loved witches. But they weren’t in the history books. They weren’t talked about. They lived out their lives quietly and furtively. This was one area that the muggle world did better, albeit not by much.

When Dumbledore stepped back into the room, Remus looked up at him, meeting his gaze with eyes that, under the sheen of tears, had finally gone dry.

“I’ll do it,” said Remus. “I’ll take the job at Hogwarts.” Of course he would. They’d both known it as soon as Dumbledore had broached the question. It was a foregone conclusion.

Dumbledore smiled. “Ah, that is a relief,” he said.

“However,” said Remus, “some say that the position is cursed. No professor has lasted more than a year for as long as anyone can remember.”

Dumbledore was silent.

“That wouldn’t bother me, if it weren’t for my—my condition,” said Remus. “I need to be assured that measures are in place so that it would be impossible for me to hurt anyone.” He spoke firmly, with conviction. As badly as he needed the job, and as eager as he was to meet Harry as an adolescent, he could not take the position if it would put any of the students in danger.

“Rest assured, Remus,” said Dumbledore, “while you are in my employment, Wolfsbane Potion will be provided to you as needed each month. Neither you nor anyone else will be in danger from your lycanthropy.”

“Wolfsbane Potion?” said Remus, his voice soft. “But that’s—”

“—Well within our means to provide for you,” Dumbledore finished for him.

“I—I don’t know what to say,” said Remus. “Thank you.”

“No, thank _you_ ,” said Dumbledore. “You are doing me a great service. This conversation has taken quite a weight off of my mind.” He stood up. “But alas, I’m afraid I must take my leave of you. As much as I’ve enjoyed having tea with you, I have other matters that can be put off no longer.”

They said their farewells, and Remus saw Dumbledore out. Above him, the sky loomed damp and drizzly, laden with grey clouds.

 _I’m going back to Hogwarts,_ Remus thought. _And I’m going to see Harry. And I won’t have to worry about my transformations_. For the first time since Sirius’s betrayal and James and Lily’s death, the future felt like something worth living for.


End file.
